26.05.2004

By any means necessary

In a continuing series debating the correct perspectives for communists in Iraq, Ian Donovan replies to the arguments of Mike Macnair in last week's paper. He argues that no strategy for the defeat of imperialism can be based on the view that islamic resistance forces are as much to be opposed as occupiers: and emphasises the demand for the latter's defeat by any means necessary.

Comrade Mike Macnair's two recent pieces on the issues posed by the eruption of mass-based resistance in Iraq - his theses ('The occupation of Iraq, the struggle against it, and the tasks of communists' Weekly Worker April 29), and his article in last week's paper ('Imperialists, islamists and communists', May 20) evidence at least some of the problems that disarm much of the left in the face of the recent series of neo-imperialist wars. While Mike himself is clearly in favour of the unconditional withdrawal of imperialist troops from Iraq, and at least verbally states that he would like to see the imperialists defeated outright, in practice many of the concrete arguments he uses somewhat contradict that.

Not only that, but he appears to politically defend forces that are clearly not in favour of such an outcome, as we shall see - which somewhat undercuts the positive features in his material. His arguments are contradictory; in part despite their correct elements they represent a misguided challenge to one of the most fundamental elements of the attitude of communists to colonial wars waged by non-working class forces - the obligation to critically support genuine struggles against imperialism for national independence.

Mike seems at first to be arguing carte blanche against supporting any struggle against colonial occupation that is not led right from the beginning by communists. This is the only way that one can interpret the passage in his second article criticising my point that the Iraqi left has to participate, independently, in the mass struggles that erupted against the US occupation in April. Mike makes a rather odd analogy with China in the 1920s to illustrate his point:

"In this context it is startling and significant that Ian should make no mention of the policy of the communists in China in the 1930s, when China was actually invaded and partially occupied by Japanese imperialism. If the Chinese communists had followed Ian's line, they would have called for 'victory to the resistance' and integrated themselves in the Guomindang. This was Stalin's advice to them. Instead, they fought the imperialists with their own forces and their own methods independently of the Guomindang. Political suicide? The result was that the defeat of the Japanese was rapidly followed by the defeat of the Guomindang and the victory of the Chinese communists" (Weekly Worker May 20).

Mike finds it odd that I should not have praised Mao's opposition to Stalin's instructions to liquidate communist political activity into the Guomindang in the late 1920s, and odd that I do not look to Mao's subsequent 'independent' struggle that led to the coming to power of the Communist Party of China in 1949. However, there is nothing remotely odd why I, or anyone else, should not hold up Mao's 'communists' as a model of how to struggle for national independence from colonial occupation where there is a strong bourgeois nationalist movement. The reasons for not making such a point is obvious - in my view the peasant-guerrilla CPC, having abandoned the cities for the sake of a guerrilla struggle whose social base was the middle peasantry, ceased to be a working class organisation by the early 1930s.

As it consolidated itself as an 'independent' alternative, it became actually just as much of a threat to the working class, in its own way, as the Guomindang. This was perceived in outline by Trotsky himself, who warned that, in the event of the peasant armies taking control of the cities, they would likely come into conflict with the proletariat. But it would be absurd to argue, because of the danger to the proletariat from both the Guomindang and the Maoist 'Red' armies, that it would have been correct for Marxists to refuse to take sides between either the Guomindang orMao's peasant armies, and the invading Japanese imperialists. And despite these considerations, and the disagreement between Stalin and Mao over whether to merge the CPC with the Guomindang, I should note that it was not the policy of Mao to refuse to take sides on those occasions when the Guomindang did clash with the Japanese.

On the contrary, the Maoist policy towards the Guomindang was a pastiche - gutted of any revolutionary content, of course - of the 'united front' tactic that the revolutionary Comintern actually envisaged between working class communist and social democratic parties. Mao's 'united front' was between a petty bourgeois/peasant, left-nationalist guerrilla army and the more conventionally bourgeois nationalist Guomindang. But it is quite clear that Mao did advocate an alliance with the Guomindang against the Japanese invaders - and attempted to undermine the Guomindang by showing in practice their failure to consistently fight for national independence.

Mike resorts to all kinds of partial and, I would argue, misleading, points of analysis about Iraq today in order to show that the insurgents do not have real mass support. For instance he says, regarding the post-April situation in Iraq, that: "there was a mass exodus of refugees from Fallujah at the height of the siege, and the US has been able to create at least a temporary deal by bringing ex-Ba'athist generals back into play. In Najaf, al-Sadr is for the present protected by deals with the traditional shia leadership, while an attempt by his militia to launch an insurrection in Basra failed, and US operations in Kerbala have not as yet proved to be the tripwire for a mass uprising. In other words, the advocates of immediate and open war to expel the occupiers do not (yet) command the level of support which would turn their minority actions into a real generalised uprising" (ibid).

It all depends what you mean by "generalised uprising". It is very rare for an uprising, anywhere in the world, to be "generalised" in the manner Mike means for very long. It either tends to be victorious outright, or suffer setbacks. Mike talked earlier about China and the war of the Maoists, and tried to use their example to illustrate why we should not take a clear side with the Iraq insurgency today. However, Mike must be aware that, due to an unfavourable relationship of forces in periods during their struggle, the CPC was forced to undertake the Long March (which was in fact a long retreat) to the most remote areas of China in the north-western Shanxi province in 1935.

Was not this reverse and retreat far more dramatic than anything that has happened to the April insurgents in Iraq, thus far at least? Obviously, yes. Did this retreat mean that Mao was no longer leading a "generalised" uprising against the Japanese and the Guomindang, and no longer had mass support? Obviously, no. Anyone who drew such a conclusion would have been extremely foolish. Such anti-colonial movements can and often do go through all sorts of stages of reversal and retreat, as well as advance, and still eventually prove their potency, as history has shown. The fact that the US has to resort to negotiations, and the use of ambiguous figures like ex-Ba'athist generals and 'moderate' ayatollahs to manoeuvre politically against the insurgents, instead of simply crushing them, is proof in itself of the popular, mass character of the insurgency. Mike's denial of the mass character of the April uprising is spurious and tendentious in the extreme - as a rationalisation for taking no side, it is pretty thin.

Many of Mike's points in his article seem particularly shallow and spurious when you look at the content. His point about torture, for instance. As if everyone was not aware that torture was used by the Romans and the ancient Chinese. Undoubtedly before then as well. However, my point was about the international organisation of modern torture by imperialism, about the fact that the CIA is de facto the most powerful institution utilising torture (and much worse) for truly global strategic objectives that the world has ever seen.

It is concretely true that regimes such as those of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen - you name it - have been systematically equipped to use 'scientific' torture particularly as a weapon in the cold war and now the 'war on terror' by US imperialism. The fact that the KGB may once have acted similarly, or that torture has taken place in liberation movements such as the ANC, does not negate the fact that the CIA organises torture on a global, not merely incidental or local, scale. The reason for this is simply that US imperialism is that state that has, because of its historically evolved power, taken upon itself the global defence of capitalism and capitalist interests. To say this is not the "common error of 'anti-imperialism'" at all, but simple world political reality.

But what is really behind Mike's argument is rather worrying. His operative conclusions for Iraq are really spelled out in his theses. In fact, there is an element of a kind of genuine popular-frontist strategy in his argument, viz:

"There is … deep contradiction between the continuation of the neocons' role in the Bush administration and in particular in the formation of Iraq and Middle East policy, and the objective interests of US capital and the US state. Opening up this contradiction, together with continuing military and other resistance to the occupiers, can change the calculations of the imperialist centres and lead to the end of the occupation."

"The problem with jihadi strategy in this context (leaving aside for the moment the reactionary character of the jihadis' general politics) is that it cannot take into account the military balance of forces … or exploit this contradiction. The more Iraqi resistance to the occupation becomes linked to the jihadi trend in islamism, the more the neocons will be able in the US to link it to 9/11, and thereby secure themselves electorally against the factions of US capital seeking their ouster. The drift towards jihadi politics thus makes getting imperialist troops out of Iraq less likely. The neocons and the jihadis are perfectly genuine mirror images of one another: both aim for a general war between the Middle Eastern muslim countries and the US, which, in the existing military relationship of forces, would be a bloodbath and an utter disaster for the working class of the Middle East" (Weekly Worker April 29).

There are several errors in this. The first being a facile equation between the forces fighting the US-UK coalition on the ground with jihadis, which are then more or less explicitly linked by Mike with the perpetrators of 9/11. The fact that lying propagandists in the United States may try to link armed opposition in Iraq to 9/11 does not make it true that there is any real association between these two things. Mike may not have noticed, but the Bush administration was able in its drive to war with Iraq to pretty successfully link the regime of Saddam Hussein in the US popular mind with 9/11 - even though this was a complete and utter pack of lies from start to finish. While there may well be some elements loyal to al Qa'eda involved in the armed opposition to the occupation in the sunni triangle, there is absolutely no evidence, and still less likelihood in reality or logic, of connections between the perpetrators of 9/11 and the al-Mahdi militia of Muqtada al-Sadr.

Why is this? Two very good reasons. One. Sadr's al-Mahdi militia is not some clandestine grouping that engages primarily in hit-and-run guerrilla activity at all, but an openly organised, publicly accessible militia, with thousands of members. Utterly different from al Qa'eda or anything remotely resembling it. It more resembles Hezbollah in Lebanon than al Qa'eda. And that brings us to the second reason why it is extremely unlikely to be connected to the perpetrators of 9/11. Confessional reasons - the fact that it actually is based on a different, and antagonistic, sub-religion. Shi'ism and sunnism (al Qa'eda is sunni) are as different, and antagonistic, as protestantism and catholicism within christianity. The antagonism was shown quite dramatically at the shia holy festival of Ashura earlier this year, when what were probably sunni extremists (who may have been manipulated by the occupiers) planted bombs that killed hundreds of shia pilgrims in Kerbala.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the shia insurgents, or any of the sunni insurgents except those that can be directly associated with al Qa'eda (undoubtedly a small minority even according to US propaganda - which mainly talks of 'Saddam loyalists'), in any way share bin Laden's crazed goal of a generalised war between muslim countries and the west. This is a phantasmagorical view, rather analogous to James Burnham's vision of Stalinists marching to rule the world after World War II.

What Mike seems to be saying to the Iraqi insurgents in the passages quoted above is: 'Don't engage in armed struggle against the occupation, because Bush and the neocons will lie about you, say you are linked to bin Laden, and use that as a weapon to defeat the Democrats in the elections, and thereby maintain the occupation. Whereas, if the opponents of the neocons win, it will be easier to end the occupation because really the neocons' policies are opposed to the interests of US capital.'

Well, it may be true that the Bush administration's policies are irrational from the point of view of US capital, but in my opinion the aim of communists should be to take advantage of that to inflict a defeat on US capital as a whole. Not to make a tacit bloc with the more far-sighted, less hubristic wing of US capital to end the Iraq occupation in such a manner as in practice would minimise the damage to US capital as a whole. This in my view is in effect the essence of popular frontism, and recalls the strategy of some 'official' communists and the more rightwing Trotskyists in the Vietnam war, in seeking a bloc with anti-war US bourgeois politicians.

Mike's conclusion is that "…a leadership which opposed both the occupation and the jihadis - especially one which based itself on the interests of the working class, as opposed to the existing regimes in the Middle Eastern countries - could, like the Vietnamese Communist Party in the Vietnam war or the Chinese Communist Party in its response to the Japanese invasion, exploit the contradictions existing within the imperialist front. Such a leadership would threaten the US with a genuine repeat of Vietnam: with both a 'domino effect' spreading across the Middle East, and an inspiration (however deformed) to radicals around the world" (ibid).

While indeed it is obvious that a working class opposition should base itself on the working class and seek to organise itself as an independent force, to create its own militias, etc, it is not clear what Mike means by opposing "both the occupation and the jihadis". Particularly given his earlier quoted remarks dismissing the mass character of the Iraqi insurgency. Putting aside the falsity of Mike's definition of 'jihadis' for a moment, if all Mike means is that the left should make no concessions to the political programme of the islamists of various kinds, then no-one could disagree.

In his later document, Mike makes his position no clearer, in reality. In analysing the positions of the Worker-communist Party of Iraq, he writes: "There is, however, absolutely no reason to slander the Iraqi communists [ie, the WCPI - ID], as Ian does by the assertion that the AWL's line is 'an even worse expression' of the method of the Iraqi communists' arguments. The Iraqi communists confront both the immediate fact of imperialist occupation - the axe murderer, or, in the terms of 1917 Russia, 'Kornilov' - and the very slightly less immediate threat of political islam - the poisoner, or, in Russian terms, 'Kerensky'. Their weakness makes it hard for them to follow the Bolsheviks' policy towards Kornilov and Kerensky or the Chinese CP's policy towards the Japanese invaders and the Guomindang. But their policy, though confused, is part-way towards this line" (Weekly Worker May 20).

Mike is making excuses for the WCPI here. It is not their weakness that prevents the WCPI from arming itself and allying with insurgents against the imperialist invaders. It is rather that they see no difference between them, and indeed tend to see the insurgents as worse than at least some imperialist forces - particular those with blue UN helmets. Understandably so in some ways, of course. Just as it was understandable that under Stalinist tyranny many Ukrainians, including some leftists, saw Hitler's invading armies as potential liberators in 1941. One can have sympathy with such people, for life under Stalinism had driven them to such an understanding.

But it was also necessary to say bluntly to them that they were wrong - as history clearly shows. The WCPI are wrong to regard a nicer imperialist 'liberation' under the UN flag as supportable. This is not just a minor problem, as Mike asserts. They are also wrong to say that the war between the US-UK coalition and the current insurgents is simply a 'war of terrorists' in which Iraqi workers should have no side - a position that is not, as Mike rationalises it, merely one of weakness, but rather of conviction and dogma. As the WCPI wrote recently: "The Worker-communist Party of Iraq calls on all civilised, freedom-loving, humanist and progressive people, socialist and labour forces to actively intervene in Iraq and along with the people of Iraq to stand against both poles of terrorism and their war and to strongly support the third pole and its liberationist alternative" (The third pole, reprinted in Solidarity April 20).

The real problem with this is that Mike cannot bring himself to say, outright, that the WCPI are wrong to refuse to advocate such a temporary alliance. He recommends a policy of "with them as far as they fight the occupiers, against them as far they fight to assert their own control", which is correct. Likewise he uses the analogy of Kerensky and Kornilov. Whereas some of his other phrases, about opposing both the 'jihadis' and the imperialists, lend credence to the idea that Mike himself considers it no big deal whether to adopt the position consistent with this analogy - ie, the temporary alliance of the proletariat with the existing insurgents - or whether to adopt the WCPI's position, that of a 'plague on both their houses' as a matter of principle.

For Mike, this difference seems a matter of mere practicalities, and therefore it is supposedly a "slander" to say that the WCPI have anything in common at all with the AWL on this. However, it is obvious from reading the WCPI's materials that, for them, this equation of the two sides as waging a "war of terrorists" is not about practicalities, but about principles. Therefore, the fact that the WCPI allies itself with the AWL is not some kind of unfortunate misunderstanding, but a result of a real degree of programmatic overlap. Though I doubt very much that the WPCI would approve of such positions as the AWL's opposition to the Palestinian right to return, or for that matter would quite share their position of overt softness on coalition troops in Iraq, there is nevertheless a real overlap with this refusal to critically bloc with the insurgency and the softness on the UN.

Thus Mike's assertion that my position is identical with the United Secretariat majority's position of support for Khomeini in 1978 - and therefore, one supposes, identical with the Stalin-Bukharin line of liquidating the Communist Party into the Guomindang in 1926-27 - is contrary to reality. This is not the question in dispute at all; rather what is in dispute is whether revolutionaries should concretely ally themselves with mass-based, non-working class forces, including islamist forces, for the limited democratic goal of driving an imperialist occupier out of the territory of an oppressed and subjugated nation. Mike pays lip-service to this, yet claims it is not operative by denying the mass character of the resistance. And he seems to say that the question of principle involved is merely a question of 'practicalities'. Thus his theses do not aid clarity, but rather muddy the waters as to what the correct position actually should be in the current situation.

Marxists are under no obligation to side with every force, no matter how venal, that claims to be leading a struggle against imperialism. The Taliban, for instance, a creation of US and Pakistani intelligence, with no evidence whatsoever of any popular support or element of national-democratic revolt about them - very much the opposite in fact - were clearly not supportable against US imperialism in 2001 during the US semi-invasion of Afghanistan. But, when a real popular struggle erupts and masses of people in major urban centres revolt, as happened in April and since, I maintain that to take no side in such a war of national liberation would be a violation of the elementary duty of Marxists to act as a tribune of the oppressed on an international level.

Some aspects of Mike's theses are positive. We do indeed have to struggle against confessional divisions, to guard against a descent into warlordism, as with Somalia or Afghanistan, etc, to construct democratic state forms that can democratically unite the different peoples in Iraq and indeed on a wider basis than Iraq. I have addressed some of these questions in my articles on the subject. It may indeed be necessary to build "an anti-occupation coalition political centre capable of including both (some) islamist and secular (communist, Ba'athist, etc) tendencies". But how can you even begin to do that with the view that such forces are to be equated with, if not worse than, the imperialists (or some of them) as enemies in the immediate sense, as the WCPI believe? You cannot. And it is that refusal to accurately criticise the WCPI position, and the resulting ambiguity about what Mike's position actually is on the current war of resistance to occupation in Iraq, that makes his thesis and his subsequent article fundamentally flawed, and not the basis for a clear position on the national rights of Iraq.

Imperialists out of Iraq - now, and by any means necessary!